Before You Sign That Contract
Reading a contract can feel like you’re running in a marathon. The longer you read, the more tired you get. And after 3 or 4 pages of legalese, you start skimming. By the 10th page, you’re skipping entire paragraphs. When you finally reach what are known as the “boilerplate provisions of the contract,” you stop reading all together and put the contract down. Chances are, the parts you managed to read appeared okay. At least nothing jumped off the page at you screaming “warning, run to the nearest Delaware business attorney.”
Written contracts are more than just a formality you have to go through to move forward with the deal. The specific words in the contract you're about to sign are important, and they can come back to haunt you if you end up in court.
In future articles, I’ll give you examples of how one or two words can make a tremendous difference in the way a contract is interpreted, and I'll describe why boilerplate paragraphs shouldn't be agreed to without really understanding what they mean. For now, let me state what may seem obvious: A contract should be a written document that reminds 2 businessmen what they agreed to, and sets out what happens if one of the parties fails to do what he promised. Unfortunately, contracts are not always written with this concept in mind.
